PLUC Tales – It’s Been A Year – Part 2

30Jun

WordPress (Photo credit: Huasonic)

So, today is exactly a year since I took on the PLUC webmaster role & made my inaugural post.

The site had been running since Dec 2010, with a handful of posts, 6 followers & under 5,000 hits. After a quick makeover & a healthy dose of bad puns picked by me, we now have 79 followers, close to 39,500 hits and are numbers 81 & 28 in the Top 50 & Top 100 ukulele sites respectively.

Advertising PLUC through the site & through other on-line sources means we now have around 25 regular members, all in different stages of learning the uke – from our experts Chris & Rufus to newest members Dian & Anthony, who’d barely picked up the ukulele before they came along!

We’ve tried to cover a wide range of topics in the blog: uke history & trivia; resources & useful sites (particularly for beginners); interesting & unusual uke cover versions; music theory & more. I always find it interesting to find the different stories behind how folk came to start playing: we have a growing number of PLUC Tales as people share their stories.

santa brought ukes! (Photo credit: maple’s mama)

It’s hugely enjoyable researching & finding new sites to mention. Many have already been featured or will be mentioned in upcoming entries. However, I’ll leave you with one of the most inspiring blogs I’ve seen: workingdraft – where Laurie writes about her work in India with survivors of human trafficking. She initially took out twenty Dolphin ukuleles in March this year & has been teaching groups of women to play the uke. Her latest post relates that the first batch have now been restored to their homes & families, returning with a new uke & a pile of music.